IBM Cognos vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
IBM Logo
2,086 views|1,221 comparisons
SAS Logo
3,574 views|2,854 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and SAS Visual Analytics based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Legacy BI Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. SAS Visual Analytics Report (Updated: January 2022).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category.""The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us.""We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time.""Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos.""Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions.""Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc.""Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'.""In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."

More IBM Cognos Pros →

"Great for handling complex data models.""The alert generation feature also helps in sending out ad hoc messages to the business users if business thresholds have been crossed.""I use Visual Analytics for enterprise reporting.""It integrates well with SAS, making it simple and quick for developers.""Quick deployment to dashboards and analytics features (using SAS Visual Statistics and Enterprise Guide). Easy to create a simple forecast and discover business insights using segmentation tools.""I believe that the possibilities for exploring data and formulating visual results are quite good because it allows the business analyst to have different perspectives on the data.""It's a stable, reliable product.""Data handling is one of the best features of SAS Visual Analytics."

More SAS Visual Analytics Pros →

Cons
"The solution seems to slow down the servers.""This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how.""I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page.""Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't.""It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it.""The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved.""We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics.""Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."

More IBM Cognos Cons →

"There is room for improvement in anti-money laundering prevention and operation monitoring, as well as operation monitoring surveillance.""Better connectivity with other data origins, better visualization, and the ability to create KPIs directly would all help.""There are a few little things that are predefined and can be done out of the box immediately. There is no business intelligence application that is predefined, which is something some customers or prospects would love to have. Small and mid-sized companies would struggle with it because they prefer something standard that has been predefined by somebody else.""The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages.""The installation process can be a bit complex.""The reason we haven't rolled it out across the board is due to the fact that the licensing is so expensive.""The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy.""It is not as mature as competitors such as Tableau and QlikView."

More SAS Visual Analytics Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
  • "The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
  • "IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
  • "Pricing should be improved."
  • "The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
  • "It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
  • "Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
  • "It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
  • More IBM Cognos Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing is simple."
  • "$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
  • "The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
  • "Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
  • "SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
  • "It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
  • "It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • More SAS Visual Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Legacy BI Tools solutions are best for your needs.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting.
    Top Answer:The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved.
    Top Answer:The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps with… more »
    Top Answer:The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages.
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 3 in Legacy BI Tools
    Views
    2,086
    Comparisons
    1,221
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    433
    Rating
    8.2
    7th
    out of 70 in Data Visualization
    Views
    3,574
    Comparisons
    2,854
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    393
    Rating
    8.5
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
    SAS BI
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

    IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

    IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

    • IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.

    • IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.

    • IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.

    • IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.

    • IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.

    • IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

    Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

    SAS Visual Analytics is a data visualization tool that is used for reporting, data exploration, and analytics. The solution enables users - even those without advanced analytical skills - to understand and examine patterns, trends, and relationships in data. SAS Visual Analytics makes it easy to create and share reports and dashboards that monitor business performance. By using the solution, users can handle, understand, and analyze their data in both past and present fields, as well as influence vital factors for future changes. SAS Visual Analytics is most suitable for larger companies with complex needs.

    SAS Visual Analytics Features

    SAS Visual Analytics has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Data
    • Interactive data discovery
    • Augmented analytics
    • Chat-enabled analytics
    • Sharing and collaboration
    • Visual analytics apps
    • Embedded insights
    • Location analytics
    • Security and administration
    • In-memory engine

    SAS Visual Analytics Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing SAS Visual Analytics. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Machine learning and natural language: SAS Visual Analytics uses machine learning and natural language explanations to find, visualize, and narrate stories and insights that are easy to understand and explain. This enables you to find out why something happened, examine all options, and uncover opportunities hidden deep in your data.
    • Easy and efficient reporting: With SAS Visual Analytics, you can create interactive reports and dashboards so you can quickly summarize key performance metrics and share them via the web and mobile devices.
    • Easy to use: SAS Visual Analytics was designed to be easy to use. Its easy-to-use predictive analytics enables even business analysts to assess possible outcomes, which also helps organizations make smarter, data-driven decisions.
    • Self-service data: Self-service data preparation gives users the ability to import their own data, join tables, create calculated columns, apply data quality functions, and more. In turn, the solution empowers users to access, combine, clean, and prepare their own data in an agile way, which helps facilitate faster, broader adoption of analytics for your entire organization.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SAS Visual Analytics solution.

    A Senior Manager at a consultancy says, “The solution is very stable. The scalability is good. The usability is quite good. It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective.

    PeerSpot user Robert H., Co-owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH, comments, “What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes.

    Andrea D., Chief Technical Officer at Value Partners, explains, “The best feature is that SAS is not a single BI tool. Rather, it is part of an ecosystem of tools, such as tools that help a user to develop artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on. SAS is an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem of products. We've found the product to be stable and reliable. The scalability is good.”

    Sample Customers
    More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
    Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company9%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization57%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Government21%
    Insurance Company16%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Transportation Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Government13%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise61%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise72%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Cognos vs. SAS Visual Analytics
    January 2022
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. SAS Visual Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2022.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cognos is ranked 3rd in Legacy BI Tools with 11 reviews while SAS Visual Analytics is ranked 7th in Data Visualization with 9 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while SAS Visual Analytics is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAS Visual Analytics writes "Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and QlikView, whereas SAS Visual Analytics is most compared with Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Databricks, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and Qlik Sense. See our IBM Cognos vs. SAS Visual Analytics report.

    We monitor all Legacy BI Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.